Ross Douthat

speaker

328 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2022 last heard Mar 2022

Ross Douthat’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Nocturnists · The Uncertain World of Chronic Lyme with Ross Douthat · 15 Mar 2022 podcast

The best evidence for the consensus view is that when the NIH and other places have run trials where they give people with persistent symptoms longer doses of antibiotics, meaning in most cases twelve weeks, let's say, rather than six, they show either marginal improvement or none at all.

So there is not a sort of double blind controlled trial showing that six months to a year of antibiotics.

helps people.

And so that's more or less where the debate is.

So the reassurer was one of the first doctors I saw.

And he was someone who basically occupied a space in between the CDC consensus and the real outsiders, where he said, Look, I don't think we should treat people for Lyme disease for years and years, but sometimes you need more than four weeks.

So you should just continue taking the antibiotic you're taking.

Taking for a couple months and then we'll see where you are.

And that was probably four or five months into the illness.

That was very much what I wanted to hear, that I could just take amoxicillin one antibiotic, take it till Christmas, which was a couple months away, and see tons of improvement.

And at the same time that I saw him, I saw a doctor who was more on the fringe, who is the one I called the maverick, who was much scarier.

Right.

He was someone who said chronic Lyme disease is totally real, it's wildly underdiagnosed, the medical establishment doesn't understand it at all.

And you're really sick, Ross, and I treat people for months and even years, and you might have to try a lot of different things over a long period of time to get better.

And that was not what I wanted to hear.

So I did not go to that doctor initially.

Uh I followed the more reassuring course.

And unfortunately the more reassuring course didn't get me better.

I took one antibiotic, I didn't get worse, but I definitely didn't get better.

And so at a certain point I

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